Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a significant public health burden that contributes to 88,000 deaths and costs approximately $250 billion per year in the United States, alone (Sacks et al. 2015; Stahre et al. 2014). AUD is heavily genetically-influenced, with increased individual risk of developing AUD corresponding with the extent of AUD diagnosis within an individual’s family (Kendler et al. 2018; Yoon et al. 2013). The extent to which the association between this genetic risk and aberrant neurobiology and function in humans can be explored is significantly limited by important ethical considerations. To this end, animal models of genetic AUD risk have been valuable tools to explore these types of questions in neuroscience.
